Spinning My Wheels?

Friends, I need your advice!

See, I've never been what you might call "proficient" when it comes to time management.  I'm more the "Ohmygod I have so much to do it's making my brain shut down, time to take a nap and sort it all out later" kind of gal.  The "I'll think about that tomorrow", Scarlett O'Hara sort.

I compose to-do lists, but somehow while in the midst of trying to finish my tasks I always get sidetracked by other things that I need to do which didn't make it to my list.  So I start doing those things.  And by the end of the day I feel as though I've done nothing but spin my wheels.  So I eat lots of chocolate in order to soothe my feelings of inadequacy.

And never has this problem been so glaringly obvious than in relation to blogging.

There is no way that a non-blogger could understand everything that goes into running a blog, outside of physically creating posts.  And I know that each blogger does things differently, especially in relation to the topics they blog about.  For me, most of the time there's the obvious cooking/photo taking/minor photo editing aspect.  Then there's the creation of a post.  And of course the eating of what I cooked.  But what happens after I click "Publish Post"?

Numerous things.  I tweet.  I Facebook.  I link to many memes and make it a point to visit and comment on as many other links as humanly possible (I've blown entire days doing this, truly, but have found some great friends and have drummed up a few readers as well).  I email my own commentors and sometimes am lucky enough to start conversations with them.  I tell myself that I should put recipes up on Tasty Kitchen but usually forget (I think I've remembered, like, twice).  I submit to other food sites.  I go through my reader.  I visit forums.  I tweet some more.  I try to remember to Stumble (this is a more recent discovery of mine...late to the party, as always).  Now I'm also a contributing blogger for About One (my foccacia recipe went up today!) and have another project in the pipeline which I alluded to last month - this is a paying gig but I still don't want to say anything definite because even though I submitted my signed paperwork a couple of days ago I haven't received confirmation of receipt. 

Then? I tweet some more.  Sometimes the Twitter stream is moving so rapidly that I just read tweets.  Me and my voyeuristic tendencies.

The result: I'm exhausted.  I am really 100% loving all of the talking, sharing and communicating which is going on.  Not to mention learning.  I'm having so much fun, and there's no way I'm giving up this time.

But I'm tired, too.  And the worst part? I feel like all I'm doing is spinning my wheels.  If I felt like I was accomplishing something it would be one thing.  But all I'm doing is eating more and more chocolate to compensate for feelings of inadequacy because I just can't get it all done.  I can't visit all my friends every day.  I can't comment on all of my fellow meme linkers' blogs.  Sometimes I don't manage to get back to all of my beautiful commentors.  I can't churn out brilliant post after brilliant post.  There's only so much brilliance in my head.

But still I tippity-type away.

Don't even get me started on how "real life" may be suffering.

So I ask you, my wise bloggy friends: Have you been in my shoes? Do you have a blogging schedule? Do certain forms of blog-related activity take precedence over others? Are you a Twaddict? (I don't know if that's a word or if I just made it up right now)  Share with me!  Or, send chocolate.  Preferably the dark variety.